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Report: U.S. spent $3.7 trillion on welfare over last five years

“We have just concluded the 5th fiscal year since President Obama took office. During those five years, the federal government has spent a total $3.7 trillion on approximately 80 different means-tested poverty and welfare programs. The common feature of means-tested assistance programs is that they are graduated based on a person’s income and, in contrast to programs like Social Security or Medicare, they are a free benefit and not paid into by the recipient,” says the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee.

“The enormous sum spent on means-tested assistance is nearly five times greater than the combined amount spent on NASA, education, and all federal transportation projects over that time. ($3.7 trillion is not even the entire amount spent on federal poverty support, as states contribute more than $200 billion each year to this federal nexus—primarily in the form of free low-income health care.)

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A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.

Though I should add, in fairness, that the welfare benefits probably got distributed this year for the most part, whereas we’d have had to wait another two years or so to be able to view some parts of the unusable websites.

Social Security or Medicare, they are a free benefit and not paid into by the recipient,

Social Security and Medicare do not have their OWN funds. NO ONE PAYS INTO THEM. That money goes directly into the general fund, as per the Supreme Court’s Ruling that says that people are not ENTITLED to money from Social Security. They still are a free benefit, the only difference between them is that Social Security gets everyone’s FIRST dollars as the rest of the taxes are worse and are excessively more progressive.

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Hey! Look everyone, a red herring.
Seen here in it’s natural environment, the red herring is a master of deflection, and attempts to change the debate into something non-destructive to its core ideology.

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Hey! Look everyone, a red herring.
Seen here in it’s natural environment, the red herring is a master of deflection, and attempts to change the debate into something non-destructive to its core ideology.

LincolntheHun on October 23, 2013 at 2:30 PM

1) He listed Solyndra, so it’s pretty clear he’s not trying to advance the leftist ideology.

2) If you don’t think corporate welfare in general is part of the leftist ideology then you haven’t been paying attention. Government picking winners and losers is right at the core of progressivism, and inevitably, the “winners” are the large corporations – even when relatively non-ideological bureaucrats make regulations and try to avoid destroying an industry, they of necessity design the rules around the concerns of the current entrenched large employers, since otherwise they risk high profile collapses of bloated corporations that result in tens or hundreds of thousands of laid-off workers.

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The topic presented is welfare and the amount of money that has been spent in the last five years with little to show for it.
If you are against the wasting of money this way, you will not water down the argument by introducing ancillary topics or resort to logical fallacies.
Since he did, and you are defending the watering down of the argument, I can only come to the conclusion that the two of you wish to avoid having the discussion in the first place as you can not effectively counter the facts presented.

“…The 15% number is not the number living in poverty. It is the number who would be living in poverty if it weren’t for all the money n’stuff we give to the poor. For when we calculate the poverty number we ignore almost all of what is done to alleviate poverty. We leave out all four of the largest anti-poverty programs in fact…”

The topic presented is welfare and the amount of money that has been spent in the last five years with little to show for it.
If you are against the wasting of money this way, you will not water down the argument by introducing ancillary topics or resort to logical fallacies.
Since he did, and you are defending the watering down of the argument, I can only come to the conclusion that the two of you wish to avoid having the discussion in the first place as you can not effectively counter the facts presented.

LincolntheHun on October 23, 2013 at 2:51 PM

Thank God we have topic police to keep us from “watering down the argument” by observing that the real welfare expenditures are much worse than reported in the article. ‘Cause talking about how the welfare problem is worse than reported is just totally irrelevant to an article on welfare spending.

Thank God we have topic police to keep us from “watering down the argument” by observing that the real welfare expenditures are much worse than reported in the article.

No sir, thank you for all of those links you provided. These articles and papers thoroughly validated your position. Rather than throwing out spurious allegations, that undermined the original argument you provided deep, detailed facts that further showed the problems of welfare.

No sir, thank you for all of those links you provided. These articles and papers thoroughly validated your position. Rather than throwing out spurious allegations, that undermined the original argument you provided deep, detailed facts that further showed the problems of welfare.

LincolntheHun on October 23, 2013 at 3:24 PM

I know I shouldn’t keep feeding you, but WTF? I was supposed to give you links to articles and papers for a passing comment on a blog post? You didn’t even dispute the content of what I said! What “spurious allegations”? That corporate welfare exists and is bad?

Now every unremarkable, uncontroversial observation needs an academic dissertation? It’s one thing to cite sources in an actual deep discussion, but you’re actually going to get pissy that every passing remark on a blog post isn’t footnoted with links to peer reviewed journals?

And where the hell were your links, Mr. Hall monitor?

I hope your happy, that’s all your food for today. Go troll another thread if you’re still hungry.